Monthly Archives: July 2009

Happily ensconced up here in North Adams, MA at the Bang on a Can festival. They keep us busy here; not a lot of time to “blog”. Here is last night’s 3-hour rehearsal of Steve Reich’s Music For 18 Musi­cians:

That’s Brian Calhoon on the left. At one point I get up from my piano and join him on the top line of the marimba. I love how Reich treats pianists (the most finicky of musi­cians) as nothing more than auxil­iary percus­sion­ists (some of the most down-to-earth). Props for putting us in our place, Steve. The perfor­mance, and my grand marimba début, are coming up on Saturday. (Side note: we were trying to explain to an Aussie percus­sion­ist the meaning of the expres­sion “props”, and decided it is to prop someone up with a stage prop, like a teapot or some­thing.)

A couple days ago I played Derek Johnson’s solo piano piece Infinity Plunge in front of some apoc­a­lyp­tic Anselm Kiefer land­scapes. The piece is a pretty stunning showcase of both compo­si­tional and pianis­tic virtu­os­ity, and has a wonder­ful dramatic sweep over the course of 3 and a half move­ments (which are all linked by related gestures, motives, and tempi). You can listen here:

Right now I’m off to rehearse Antheil’s Ballet Mechanique. This festival is all about testing the stamina of massed pianists; the Ballet is almost more taxing in the few instances I’m not playing, but fran­ti­cally counting the rests until the next time I come in. Funny how that works.